Reversal
by VMargarita
Summary: While Sam and Bobby work desperately to get the Purgatory souls out of Castiel, Dean, well, keeps Castiel distracted.  Further warnings inside.
1. Chapter 1

_The television show "Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc._

Author's Note: Although I like to think that this story has socially redeeming value, there's no question that it includes male-male sex, spanking, and a threesome. If you're horrified by such things, go no further. On the other hand, if you're horrified by such things, why did you filter for the "M" rating? Ah, go on ahead. This is nothing you haven't read already.

.

_We're going to have to kill him._

The thought paralyzed Dean, closed his throat.

"I'm not an angel anymore," Castiel had said, after he had easily removed the angel-killing sword with which Sam had attacked him. "I'm your new God – a better one. So you will bow down and profess your love unto me, your lord, or I shall destroy you."

Sam's attack had been so sudden, and its futility so quickly obvious, that Dean hadn't had a chance to react. But now he had to consider how to destroy Castiel. Cas, the angel who had pulled Dean from Hell, been heartbroken in his patient search for God, who had been isolated and injured in his struggles for humanity's benefit, was now standing before them filled with the power of uncountable Purgatory souls, deluded and insane.

"Cas – Lord Castiel – please. Please listen to me," Sam said. "I know what it's like, taking that power into you, and you think you'll be able to save the world with it, but remember – "

There was a literal flash in Castiel's eyes as he whipped his head around to stare at Sam. "Are you comparing my transcendent holiness with your filthy and depraved addiction to demonic blood?"

Sam crashed to his knees. For a moment he was silent, his eyes wide. Then he yelled in pain, lurched forward, and was yanked upright again. He gave another scream of pain, clenching his fists, swaying back and forth as if held upright on his knees by a string at the back of his neck.

Bobby ran to him. Dean turned to Castiel. "Cas, please – please – He didn't understand, he's just human, please forgive him!"

Sam collapsed, no longer screaming, wrapping his arms around his chest and gut, breathing heavily.

"I realize that, Dean," Castiel said quietly. "I am a forgiving God. But blasphemy must be punished. My Father allowed blasphemers far too much latitude, and where is He now?"

"Sam, you OK?" Dean asked.

"Of course he is," Castiel said. "I am making an example of him. Your new God punishes, but also he rewards."

Sam went completely still.

"Sam!" And Dean joined Bobby on the young man's other side.

Sam was staring up at them, his eyes wide again, but now there was a beginning smile on his face. "Unbelievable," he said.

"Tell us what's goin' on, boy," Bobby said.

"Unbelievable," Sam said again, and sat up. He put one hand to his side with a flinch of pain that he clearly didn't notice.

"Sam, talk now!" Dean said.

Sam looked directly at both of them in turn. "Sorry. I just – I had to explore that for a moment. But it's – the wall, the wall protecting me from memories of Hell – it's back. It's solid. I can think about – that year." He closed his eyes spasmodically for a moment, then reopened them. "Not that I want to. But I can. I can remember my soul in Hell, I can remember walking around without a soul here, and it – " He paused, pondering. "It's a horrible bunch of memories. But that's all. I'm not lost in them. They're not going to make me insane."

He got back up to his knees, looked at Castiel, bowed his head. "Thank you. Thank you, Lord Castiel. This is – this is a great gift. I'm sorry I doubted you."

Bobby and Dean exchanged a quick look. Bobby, somewhat creakily, sank to his knees. "I'm sorry I doubted you too. Lord Castiel."

"Well, you know, I've spent a lot of time not believing in God," Dean said. He got to his knees also. "Who'd've thought I'd wind up knowing him personally."

Castiel beamed at them. "Unforced worship means more to me than anything," he said, and Dean deliberately did not look at Sam. "This is merely the beginning. After I have converted or destroyed all of Raphael's followers, I shall remake the Earth in my image. You will scarcely recognize – "

He looked at them with sudden anger. "There is disbelief. One of you is mocking me."

Light was in his eyes, and it was no mere flash: A bolt of it, bright yellow and black, streamed out of his eye. A shock wave strong enough to knock Bobby off his knees spread as the bolt of light dissipated, and Castiel grabbed his head with both hands. "Raphael! Raphael is here! He's here!"

"No, Lord Castiel." Sam's voice was even. "You destroyed him just now. Your justice was administered calmly and quickly."

Cas was still rubbing his temples as though he had a ferocious headache. "Yes. Yes, I remember."

Dean cleared his throat. "The mockery – that was me."

Sam and Bobby shot looks at him, then at each other, since Dean was looking only at Castiel.

"But I wasn't mocking you," Dean continued. "I was afraid that you were going to mock me."

Castiel took his hands from his head, instantly calm, looking at Dean with a gentle smile. "Why would I mock you, Dean?"

"Because – everything you have to do – and I wanted – I wanted your time. To be, to be alone. Together."

"You wish to worship me carnally," Castiel said, reaching to touch Dean's upturned face.

"I – Yes." Dean took a breath. "I love you."

Castiel tipped Dean's head back, and his eyes closed as he kissed Dean's mouth. Sam looked away. Bobby watched carefully, his eyes slightly narrowed.

Dean and Castiel disappeared.

"Damn it!" Sam leaped to his feet. "Damn!"

Bobby began getting to his feet. "OK," Sam said desperately. "We summon an angel. There's gotta be one or two left that Cas hasn't killed. We ask him where Cas might've taken Dean."

"Why?"

"Why? In case you weren't following, Bobby, an insane super-powered being who thinks he's God just took my brother away to rape him!"

"Well, that's one way of lookin' at it."

Through gritted teeth, "What's the other way?"

"The other way of lookin' at it is that your brother's doing something no one else could do. He's buyin' us time to fix this. Now we can spend that time figuring out how to get those souls back in Purgatory where they belong. Or we can spend it standing around waving our arms and screamin' for angels."

Sam took a deep breath. "Sorry. I freaked out."

"Understandable. Are you really – OK? The stuff that you said about your Hell memories – "

"All true. I can't shut it out totally, but well enough to concentrate on other stuff. I owe Cas big time. If he doesn't torture me anymore. Or, you know, kill Dean."

"He won't. Not much I'm sure of, but I'm sure o' that. We're gonna need to come up with a Purgatory opening spell. Did you bring your laptop?"

"Yes. I took one of your cars."

"That's good, there'll be supplies in it. The Impala's upside-down a half a block from here, but I think there's still some research in it, too. Let's find a motel room, angel-proof it the best we can, and start thinkin'."

"The Impala's upside down?"

"Damn tornadic wind. Raphael's way of making an entrance."

"Great," Sam said, as they headed for the door. "Something else for Dean to deal with. When we get him back."

.

It turns out that the nerve endings in your lips don't care whether the warm flesh gently stimulating them belongs to a man or a woman. A loving kiss is a loving kiss.

When Castiel pulled away, Dean opened his eyes to discover that they were someplace else completely.

It took him a moment to recognize the Beautiful Room. The size was the same, as was the delicate gold ornamentation on the walls, but the walls themselves were blood-red from floor to ceiling. The floor was black marble veined with white; the fireplace, of the same black marble, had grown from a modest baroque fixture to an eight-foot-high monstrosity that dominated one wall. In one corner was a huge canopy bed. The canopy and satin spread were both imperial purple.

Dean stood and turned slowly, wondering what a psychologist would say about the décor. All he let himself say was, "Wow."

"You are stunned," Castiel said cheerfully, behind him.

"I am." Dean finished his turn, taking it in. "Quite a – oh."

Castiel was nude, still giving him the same sweet smile.

For a moment Dean was shocked – because, really, Cas without the trench coat was a shocker, never mind this – and then he startled himself by chuckling. "Well, you – get right down to business."

"I've waited for this a long time," Castiel said gently. "You know that."

"No. No, it's, it's a surprise – "

"You cannot lie to me, Dean. You've known for some time that I desire you. Why is it so hard for you to admit that? And if you knew you loved me, why did you not tell me?"

"Well, Cas – I mean, Lord – "

"You do love me, don't you? You said as much. And your feelings – "

"I told the truth." Dean said it fast; he didn't know how deeply or specifically Castiel could get into his mind, and he didn't want to test it. "It's just – Cas – Lord Castiel – you're, you were, an angel. And you know what I am. What I've been. How could you – I mean, I figured even if you wanted me, I'd kind of – poison your soul."

Castiel caressed Dean's face, a little sadness in his eyes. "It would not have mattered when I was an angel, Dean. But as your god, yes, you're correct. We cannot be together until you are purified."

"Should I, uh, drink holy water? Maybe take a bath in it?"

"I believe that a ritual scourging is called for."

"Oh."

"Don't be afraid. I'll only need to do it once. Unless you should corrupt yourself again."

"Don't be afraid" irritated Dean a little, and he sucked in a breath. "OK, then. Let's get this over with and get to the good stuff."

Castiel nodded. "Disrobe."

He took off his jacket – and crap, where was the demon-killing knife? He couldn't feel its weight in the jacket – no, wait, it was OK, Bobby had it. He undid the buttons of his shirt – _Don't fumble with them, Winchester, he'll think you're afraid_. He pulled off his T-shirt and crouched to undo his boot laces – _Damn, I'm going to have to get these things resoled again_. He thought of anything at all that would keep him from being too aware of Castiel watching every move he made, looking over every inch of flesh he uncovered.

He dropped his boxers onto the heap and said, heartily and a little too loudly, "OK! So are we lookin' at a whip? A riding crop?"

Castiel smiled. "You are not a farm animal, Dean. I believe – "

He started toward Dean's clothing pile, stopped within inches of Dean's body with his eyes closed. He didn't do anything as obnoxious as sniff obviously, but it was clear that he was breathing in Dean's scent.

Looking at Castiel's bent head, the mass of black hair crowning his smooth pale neck, his naked shoulders and back, Dean felt his own breath speed up.

Then Castiel picked up Dean's jeans and slid the belt out of the denim loops. "I believe this will suffice."

Dean almost flinched, then almost laughed. One of Alastair's favorite tricks had been to delicately flay the skin off of Dean's penis and testicles, then heat a blade and drag it across the exposed nerve endings. He couldn't believe he was tensing up about getting hit with a belt. "OK."

Castiel looked around, focused on one of the bedposts. "Stand there."

Dean did, grabbing the post securely, but Castiel said, "No, raise your arms."

He did, grasping the finial where the bedpost met the canopy. "Like this?"

"Exactly," Castiel said, and Dean felt something snug around his wrists. He looked up. His wrists were bound to the bedpost and canopy frame with a thick white cord that felt like satin but restrained him like iron.

Castiel folded the belt and took a step backward, out of Dean's peripheral vision. Dean cleared his throat. "Careful of the kidneys."

"Dean." Castiel was both amused and reproachful. "Any damage that I do, I can repair."

There was a blow to his upper back that pushed him into the bedpost a bit. Then pain seared across his back at the same time that the second blow landed. "Ritual" or not, Cas was taking the scourging part seriously. Dean bit his lips and grunted as the third and fourth strokes landed.

He wasn't going to keep count, always a bad idea, and Cas clearly had a pattern in mind rather than a number: He worked with lateral strokes down Dean's back to just above the kidneys. Dean could tell exactly how far down the belt had gone and how much further it had to go, where his skin was burning and where it hadn't yet been whipped. Then the leather slashed across his thighs just above his knees. When the second slash to his legs came he reflexively tried to move them both, wound up in a stupid-feeling jump while his weight was thrown onto the cords binding him. Determinedly he planted his feet, clenched his jaw, and withstood the whipping moving up his legs, grunting only every second or third stroke.

He'd always thought the problem with bare-butt spanking would be humiliation, but the way this belt was laid on, pain warred with humiliation. His ass writhed as the burning blows fell – his mind determined to stand still, his body determined to get away. His arms wrenched at the cord; all he could think of was covering his ass with his hands, but it wasn't going to happen.

Then the lashing stopped, and he heard the belt slide to the floor. He unclenched his jaw and was about to say, "Is that all you got?" when a new sensation stopped him – a light touch cooling the burn of injured skin.

Castiel was kissing him, across his back, following the pattern of the strikes, and everywhere his lips touched, cooling relief from pain spread outward. Dean wanted to make a wisecrack but couldn't think of one. His arms relaxed – he hadn't realized how tense they'd been, pinched up on either side of his head – and fresh pain flooded those muscles.

But now Castiel was kissing his way across Dean's buttocks, and the sensation that shuddered his pelvis vied for attention with the pain in his arms. Apparently his dick didn't discriminate between a woman kissing his butt and a man doing it who'd just been beating him twenty seconds ago. Nice. An equal-opportunity cock.

"I'm relieving your pain," Castiel said in his ear, "but I'm going to let the redness heal itself. These stripes are precious to me." He kissed the center of Dean's back, and Dean shivered a little. "They show your willingness to mortify your flesh for me."

The binding around Dean's wrists was gone. He tried to bring down his arms as slowly as he could, but let out a little "Ow" anyway. Still standing behind Dean, Castiel kissed the muscles along his right upper arm and shoulder, across the back of his neck – and crap, no way that should feel so good, who was he, friggin' Morticia Addams? – ending with his left shoulder and a long intense kiss to the welted handprint on his left upper arm.

Castiel's right hand slid under Dean's right arm, fondled his stiffening cock, and ran up along his chest. Dean closed his eyes and swallowed, feeling Cas' chest and cock and hand and mouth all at once.

He turned his head, and opened his eyes just as Castiel lifted his face from Dean's arm. "Cas? Are you crying?"

"I had to do it." Castiel's voice was shaking. "We could not be together if you weren't purified, but – to cause you pain – "

"Cas, I mean, Lord Castiel – "

"Perhaps I should have refused you. Perhaps I should be alone – "

Another yellow-and-black bolt streamed out of his eye. Dean saw it building and dodged aside an instant before it leaped out and dissipated, rocking the Beautiful Room with another shock wave. A chunk of the marble fireplace's mantel thudded to the floor, shattering along the veins.

"OK, Lord Castiel, we have to talk about that. When that's happening, is that souls escaping?"

Castiel was pressing a hand to his head above his eye. "Yes. When I feel a soul escaping I destroy it, so that it will possess no one. Destroying one of these souls is – it has something of the effect of splitting an atom."

"So you're – basically you're full of fissionable material."

"Yes. But you need have no fear, Dean. I am meant to control the power of these souls, as their energy was meant for me. I realized that as soon as I had taken them into myself. Does it make sense to have all of that power languishing in Purgatory? Of course not. It was waiting for me, for the new God, to save and remake the Earth."

"But sometimes some of it flies out of your eye."

"Don't worry. As you would say, there's plenty more where that came from."

That was what worried Dean. Balthazar had warned them that the power Castiel wanted could take out a sizeable chunk of the planet if Castiel lost control over it. Whether it could actually do that much damage or not, clearly the damage would be devastating, and would apparently start with Castiel's head being ripped apart.

"It happens when you're upset." Dean gave a sideways smile, rested his elbows on Cas' shoulders, and brought his lips to within an inch of Castiel's. "So we're going to have to keep you happy."

Mission accomplished; Castiel gave a long contented sigh as Dean pressed his lips to Castiel's.

Dean pulled in a long shaking breath, enfolding Castiel warmly, and kissed him again, deeply.

Castiel grabbed Dean's hips and pushed their groins together hard. Dean made a sound low in his throat, tightened his arms around Castiel and kissed him again, his intensity growing with Cas' response.

Something weird was going on with his feet. Dean broke the kiss to look down, and realized that there was nothing underneath them. He and Castiel were suspended in mid-air.

"Whoa!" he said eloquently. "Hey!"

Castiel laughed as they turned and rolled slowly, parallel to the ceiling, holding and caressing each other.

Now something was going on with Dean's anus. For a moment he was afraid that he was having a very badly timed reaction to the beating. Then he realized what was happening: His muscles were relaxing, opening, and the moisture in there was the finest silky-smooth lubricant he'd ever felt.

Castiel floated back, taking Dean's legs, and Dean let Castiel position him as he liked. He felt Castiel's heat between his thighs, on his chest, the beginning nudges of Cas' cock inside him, warm breath on his neck. He closed his eyes at the intensity, opened them to see what was, in all this strangeness, familiar. Insane or not, the loving focused gaze turned on him was purely Castiel's.

Even with Lord Castiel's Miracle Prep there was some pain, but Castiel was happy to take his time, moaning in pleasure at each small insertion, his eyes half-closed but never fully losing sight of Dean. Dean had the most amazing feeling of belonging and ownership at once. His body racked with an intense sensation that went from deep inside him to his groin and clear out the top of his head. "Oh God, Cas, please, just more!"

He touched his stiff erection and his hand was taken away. He opened his eyes as Castiel, smiling, grasped Dean's forearms and forced them away from his body. He grinned back at Cas and made as if to struggle with him, letting Cas overpower him, move in him, leaving his own demanding cock unsatisfied.

Castiel began thrusting, murmuring, "You are one with divinity. I am one with humanity. You are one with divinity. I am one with humanity."

Dean responded with a rhythm of his own, tensing and relaxing the muscles clutching Cas' cock – and God it felt so good and God he wanted more –

Castiel came, shaking, clutching Dean's arms so hard they hurt, gasping, "Dean – wanted – " Then silence but for short light gasps that sounded like sobs.

He lay back on the air, Dean looking down at him, caressing Castiel's chest, still squeezing Cas inside of him.

The blue eyes opened over a smile. "Now, I believe you wanted some attention here?"

He touched the base of Dean's penis, rubbing the whole area gently, and it was so sensitive by now that Dean almost sent them spinning with a kick. "Oh. Yeah. Attention."

Castiel closed his hand around Dean's cock. An amazing warm energy began and, as Cas clasped and pulled, built, filling Dean's body. He'd never felt anything like it and something about Cas' triumphant smile sent him completely over the edge in spasms and an out-of-control yell.

When he opened his eyes he was in bed, panting, lying next to Castiel. The white sheets and purple satin spread were at the foot of the bed and Castiel was looking over Dean's body with pleased possessive eyes.

"Thought you were a virgin," Dean croaked.

"I've been observing people for thousands of years, Dean. Of course I've observed sexual activity, even if I haven't partaken and even if I had no special interest in it. Except – "

Dean gave him a knowing grin. "Except?"

"The last two years – since I knew how I felt about you – I admit to having observed men together. I wanted to know – "

He fell silent for a moment, swallowed. "I wished for something that could not be. This is very unusual among angels."

Dean closed his eyes, opened them. "I'm sorry, Cas."

Castiel smiled beatifically. "Don't be. Had we been together, you would certainly have prevented my working with Crowley to open Purgatory, and I would not now be God. All happens as it is meant to."

"Right," Dean said, and thought, _When this is all over, remind me to stab myself in the gut_.

And speaking of gut – "Does this place still have a bathroom?"

"Yes. The same as before – in the alcove with the sofa, press on the wall below the mirror."

He damn near drowsed off in the bathroom, and was looking forward to getting back in bed for heavy-duty sleep. Then, as he was washing his hands, a thought made his eyes open wide, staring at himself in the mirror.

He couldn't fall asleep and leave Castiel awake. God alone – wherever He was – knew what Cas might do left to his own devices. He might launch a one-man war on Heaven; he might decide to start remaking Earth in his image, and if it was anything like the way he'd remade the Beautiful Room, that should be avoided; or he might decide to check in on his other worshippers, Sam and Bobby, and discover them working to strip his power.

But at the same time, there was no way Dean was going to stay awake. He'd slept in the car for a couple of hours, at Bobby's insistence, on the way from Sioux Falls to Bootback, Kansas. Since then, he'd been in a car crash, been beaten, and had an unbelievable orgasm. There was no way he was going to stay conscious for more than another few minutes.

He thought for a moment, then went back to bed. On his way he looked up at a damp-looking, slightly darker red splotch on the red ceiling. "I thought so," he told Castiel. "I got semen on the ceiling. I can honestly say that's a first."

Castiel chuckled. He had a translucent globe floating over him and was spinning it, touching the oceans and continents, turning them different colors. Dean sincerely hoped this wasn't really happening.

He got into bed, pulled the sheet up over him, and touched Castiel's chest. "Lord Castiel, sleep with me."

"Isn't that the vernacular for what we just did?" Castiel asked, turning Africa periwinkle.

"I don't mean in the vernacular. I mean literally."

"I don't need to sleep, Dean."

"No, but I'm sure you can. You can do anything."

"True." Castiel made the globe disappear and turned to Dean. "But why is it important to you that I sleep?"

"Because I have to. I'm exhausted. And I'm afraid that – well, I'm human, Lord Castiel. I'm afraid that if I go unconscious, you won't be here when I wake up."

Castiel smiled. "If this is important to you, I will promise to be here when you awake."

"And maybe sleeping might stabilize the power in you – make it less likely to jump out of your eye. That came pretty close to me last time, and I don't want to be nervous about being close to you."

"And it hurts when that happens," Castiel said. "Perhaps you're right, Dean. Perhaps sleeping will stabilize my power."

He closed his eyes, his muscles visibly relaxed, and he was deeply asleep.

Dean raised his eyebrows. He kept his hand on Cas' chest, let his own eyes drift shut, and was asleep almost as fast.

.

The laptop was still open when Sam got back to the motel, but Bobby had abandoned it in favor of a pencil and legal pad. Sam put a six-pack of beer in the refrigerator as Bobby looked up. "Did you find a place?"

"Old empty farmhouse about 10 miles out of town. Looks like crap, but structurally pretty solid, with a good-size living room. The spray paint's in the car. I've got a couple cans each of black, white, red, purple, royal blue, pale blue, green, gold, and orange. Sound like enough?"

"It does."

Sam put a big bag of salt canisters on the nearest bed and pulled a pocketknife from his jeans. "How's the spell coming?"

"It would really have helped if I'd had the original spell. I heard enough to get the gist, and of course we'd need to make changes anyway, but it woulda helped. Anyway, the good news is, I figured out a way around the lunar eclipse."

Sam picked up one of the salt containers. "Great. What is it?"

"If we call for a reversal of the spell, with some fancy writing, maybe we can open Purgatory with the reverse of a lunar eclipse."

"A full moon."

"With luck."

Sam, about to stab the top of the salt container with his knife, paused. "The full moon's tonight."

Bobby shrugged. "We'd want to work fast anyway."

"Yeah. You said that's the good news?"

"The bad news is, I don't see any way around the blood. We've gotta have it."

Sam sighed, punched the canister, and began pouring salt along a window sill. "OK. I was thinking about this. I'm sure one or two creatures' souls escaped Purgatory without Cas eating them. We do research, just like we were looking for a demon, see who nearby here suddenly started acting bizarre, hunt them down and capture them."

"By tonight."

"Uh, yeah." Sam acknowledged the difficulty with a moue and moved to the next window.

"Still leaves us draining a virgin's blood."

"Well, not draining, Bobby. That was about a quart jar Cas had. If it had equal parts virgin blood and Purgatory-creature blood – "

"Eleanor's blood," Bobby said quietly.

Sam took a breath, nodded. "If it had equal parts of both, that's about a pint each – the size of a blood donation."

"But Eleanor – "

"I think," Sam said in measured tones, "I think her injuries were more due to torture than to the use of her blood."

Bobby, his lips tight, nodded.

"So we don't need to kill a virgin – which is good," Sam said dryly. "But we need to dupe or force someone into donating blood."

"Or find a virgin who'd be thrilled to make the contribution," said an unmistakable English-accented voice.


	2. Chapter 2

_The television show "Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc._

.

Sam scooped the demon-killing knife off the bedside table with his left hand and, turning, tossed it into his right, as Bobby spun the cap off of a flask of holy water and said casually, "Next time, Sam, salt the damn door first."

Crowley raised an eyebrow. "You think I couldn't get in through a window? And I will say – " he was looking around at the symbols on the walls, windows, doors and mirror – "it looks like you're primarily concerned about someone other than the likes of me. You really think angel-proofing will keep out Wing Diesel?"

"What do you want?" Sam asked.

Crowley's face crumpled up. "Must we? Go through the whole dialogue? I'll play all roles, speed things up. I'm here to help you boys." He made as if to brush hair out of his eyes as he said in a whiny voice, "Why would you want to help us? You're the fear-inspiring King of Hell." Back to his normal voice, "Because we have a common cause, sticking a catheter in that power-bloated angel and draining those souls back into Purgatory." Lowering his voice, "We don't trust yuh 'cause yer a damn demon, so git gone." Back to his normal voice, "Well, I don't trust you either, but right now Castiel is a bigger threat to any of us than we are to each other, so what do you say we lay aside our differences for the time being and work together like civilized gentlemen, you stupid prats."

Sam and Bobby exchanged a look. Sam said, "Lay aside our differences and do what?"

"Well, you're obviously planning to reopen Purgatory. You need a spell, the blood of a Purgatory creature, the blood of a virgin, and a lunar eclipse. It's going to take all three of us – or – should be four of us – " He looked at Sam and grinned. "Where's Dean?"

"Busy."

"Mm. Could that be the reason Cassie's not breathing down your necks? He's occupied breathing down Dean's neck?"

"Tell us again about the part where you help us," Bobby said, as a muscle in Sam's jaw twitched.

"Unfortunately my powers, considerable as they are, don't extend to the movements of heavenly bodies, but – "

"I think we can get around that, as long as it gets done tonight."

"Tonight? Oh, I see." No one ever said Crowley was stupid. "Reversal. Souls go back instead of souls come here, full moon instead of covered moon – not bad, Bobbikins. Might work. You're going to have to work terribly fast, though."

"And again," Sam said, "the part where you help us is – "

"First of all, I can sense those little Purgatory buggers when they're on Earth, and thirty-five or forty of them escaped Castiel's greedy maw."

"Great," Sam said.

"You needn't worry about hunting them all. I'll go and vacuum them up for you. But in the common cause, I'll let you know where the one Purgatory creature is who stayed right here in town, and you can hunt that one."

"Hunt?" Sam said. "You're powerless to bring him here?"

Crowley beamed at him. "I'm sorry, am I supposed to say, 'I'll show you how powerless I am,' and deliver him right to you? Unfortunately for you, you're quite right. The title is King of Hell, not King of Purgatory. I can't just snap my fingers and bring it in. You do the actual hunting – I'm much more management material."

"Yeah, that's just what comes to mind when we think of you," Sam said. "You said something about a virgin who'd be thrilled to contribute blood?"

"A lady – loosely speaking – who sold her soul. Her contract's up in two months. I imagine she'd consider a pint of blood more than a fair trade for an extension on her contract."

"No," Bobby said heavily. "Her contract gets broken and she walks away. No strings attached."

"How would you put it? Nope."

"Come on, Crowley," Sam said. "All those forty escaped Purgatory souls for you to feast on and you're going to begrudge us one measly mortal soul?"

Crowley rolled his eyes. "You two are just adorable. I can't say no to you. Very well, I'll tear up the lady's contract. IF. You give me your solemn word, both of you, that – in the unlikely event Castiel survives this ectomy – you'll prevent him from going after me until I'm safely back in Hell."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Sam asked.

"Holy fire. Angel-killing sword. Asking him pretty please. Pimping out Dean again. I don't care. Give me your word."

"Listen, Crowley. You know as well as we do, there's no predicting what'll happen. I'll give you my word that I'll do my level best."

"I suppose that'll have to do. Robert?"

"Oh, I'll do my best to keep him from killing you. I'm gonna keep that pleasure all to myself."

Crowley cocked his head. "I sense hostility."

"Eleanor was a friend of mine. Don't think I'm going to forget how she died."

"Eleanor? – Oh, the Purgatory creature."

Bobby sat up, bringing his shoulders back. Sam looked from him to Crowley and back, tightening his grip on the knife.

"Her name was Eleanor," Bobby said quietly. "She was a woman I was close to once."

"You never knew the woman," Crowley said, almost as quietly. "You knew a Purgatory creature who took over the woman's body seventy-odd years ago. I'm sure she claimed to be harmless and lovable. Do you have any proof of that?"

"I don't need proof that you tortured her. It got all over my hands when we finally found her."

"Oh, Bobby." Crowley's was smiling slightly, his voice dangerously soft. "My blade did nothing to that creature. Almost nothing. It was your friend Castiel who broke her, and he didn't bleed her at all. He just looked at her – a certain way – and she started screaming like souls in Hell." He looked over at Sam. "Remind you of anyone?"

"What?" Bobby snapped.

Crowley continued to grin at Sam as he talked to Bobby. "Your friend Sam, here. Did you ever know how he found Lilith's location a couple of years back? He tortured it out of a demon. Too bad for the young married nurse the demon had possessed."

"Hey!" Bobby yelled it and rose, seizing Crowley's attention. "This is between you and me!"

"All right, let's talk about you. Let's talk about every innocent meatsuit you've ever killed – "

"We do it to – When we have to kill someone, we're saving more lives than we're ending," Sam said.

"And why do you think Cassie did it? He was desperate to stop Raphael from bringing about the Apocalypse. He was obsessed. Sound familiar, Sam? You have no idea how carefully I had to word every sentence to keep feeding his delusion that he was a knight in shining armor saving humanity from Armageddon. Incredibly annoying. And why was that? You think it would've been any skin off his delicate nose? You think he couldn't have kicked back in Heaven with a cold beer and just watched? He tortured that Purgatory creature so he could get the spell to open Purgatory so he could be powerful enough to defeat Raphael, and that was all for you lot. God knows – well – Castiel knows why."

"And what's your excuse?" Bobby barked.

"I don't need one. You know what I am? A demon. You know what I claim to be? A demon. Let's not have you two pretending that you're anything other than what you are – hunters intent on killing demons, and not caring who – literally – gets in the way."

He pointed at Bobby, and Sam took a step forward. "Now that'll be the last threat out of you about that Purgatory creature we killed, or – "

"Don't you threaten – "

"I won't lay a finger on you." A nasty smile flicked across Crowley's face. "I'll bring you a ream of paper. Biographies of every mother, father, husband, wife, brother, sister you ever tortured or scalded with holy water or shot with the Colt or stuck that bloody knife into, just because they had the bad luck to be possessed."

"Fine. I'm low on kindling."

"Oh, you'll read it. I know you. And even if you don't – " Crowley pointed at Sam – "he will. And he'll suffer through every word. Don't tempt me."

He looked at Sam. "There's a tall bald fellow in the doughnut shop on Fourth Street. He's sitting there cramming his gullet like he hasn't eaten in centuries." There was a flash of fire at his fingertips that became a piece of paper, which he threw on the table in front of Bobby. "Thought you might like the original spell. I'll be back soon with – " the same flicking smile – "your damned, bloody virgin." And he was gone.

After a moment, Sam put down the knife. "He is really scared of Cas."

"Yes. He is."

"Bobby. Do you ever think – "

"No, I don't. And neither do you. That kind of thinkin' makes you hesitate. Hesitation gets you killed."

"Yeah. You're right."

"You know what demons do with their meatsuits, Sam. They walk into gunfire. They have no-holds-barred fights with other demons. They climb electrified security fences. They drink anything – hell, inject anything – because they think it's great to feel a physical high. Nine times out of ten, the soul leaves that body the moment the demon's gone. And the tenth time – " his mouth stretched in a line as he shrugged – "if you don't kill 'em, the demon takes 'em away and kills 'em anyway. Gotta focus on the people you save, Sam. It's the only thing that makes this job worth doin'."

Sam nodded; then, "Well, there's the glamorous surroundings."

Bobby let the corner of his mouth twitch.

"Gather up those papers and the laptop. I'll finish the salt lines and then take you to the house. You finish the spell and get started on the spray painting. I'll round up the Purgatory creature and get his blood."

"You're gonna have to bring him in alive, Sam. Blood coagulates too fast. We need to bleed him right before the ritual. I think I should go with you."

"I think we don't have time for both of us to be working on one thing, Bobby. Hell of a lot of work at the house, and the sooner it gets done, the sooner we get Dean back."

.

A woman screamed. No weapon under the pillow and the bed was too big and where was he and what the hell?

By the time Dean had bolted upright with his eyes open, he'd remembered where he was. He was completely not prepared, though, for the current situation.

A blonde woman of about 30, wearing only a white nightgown, stood with her back to the wall, half-crouched as if to defend herself from Castiel, who stood a few feet away from her, looking at her quizzically. She would have been very pretty if her features hadn't been distorted with utter terror.

Dean almost jumped out of bed, but Cas was still naked and he didn't think that his own leaping into the situation would help the woman's state of mind. "Um, uh, Ca – Lord Castiel. What – " various intensifiers flashed through his mind. He ruled them out – "is happening?"

Castiel looked at him with a baffled expression. "I wish to be worshipped by the entire spectrum of humanity, male and female. She was alone, feigning sexual contact, calling my name. I thought her intent was clear."

Crap. He'd been trolling the Earth for women to bed down with and happened to run across this poor gal masturbating at just the moment she said, "Oh, God!" It would have been funny if she hadn't been so transparently terrified – not just at being in a room with two naked guys who were strangers to her, but having been transported there instantly from the safety of her own bedroom.

First things first. He looked at her and asked, "Do you speak English?"

The expression on her face was indescribable. "Do – I – speak – English?"

OK, the first good thing in 24 hours – the second, if Sam's mind was really fixed. Not only did she speak English, but with an unmistakable Midwestern American twang. Communication wouldn't be an issue.

He tried to make eye contact with her in a way that said, See, I'm sane too, ignore the fact that I'm sitting here naked. "Lord Castiel doesn't want to scare you. Or, or hurt you. He thought – well, he thought – "

"How does she not realize who I am?" Castiel asked.

"She – well, Lord Castiel, you know – "

"I am your God now, Sheryl," Castiel said sweetly to the woman. "The God about whom you were taught in Sunday school in the Presbyterian Church abandoned His children. I am your God now, and I shall not abandon you. I shall not abandon the angels and leave them only hope, or despair. You may worship me with confidence and joy."

The woman's back was straightening during this speech, and her eyes narrowing. _Oh, crap_, Dean thought, but couldn't stop her from saying, "I don't know what the hell is happening or who you guys are, but one thing I know, you are not God."

"Lord Castiel, she just – she doesn't understand – humans need – "

"It's all right, Dean." Castiel looked over at him, and Dean couldn't see any anger in his expression. "I understand her mind. It's not blasphemy, merely lack of faith. I should have realized that not all humans would understand and accept my divinity as readily as you do. Some require that faith be given to them."

He looked back at Sheryl, who met his gaze for a moment and then collapsed.

Dean leaped out of bed and headed for her just as she looked up at Castiel. With an expression of utter adoration.

"Forgive me, Lord," she said. "I'm so ashamed. I didn't realize."

Dean came to a screeching halt, staring at her. Castiel gave Dean a small smile. "Did you think I would hurt her?"

_Oh, why would I think that, when all you did was torture my brother_ – But he had to shut that thought up fast, Cas was looking at him with a darkening gaze. _Concentrate, Dean, think of the good things_.

He deliberately remembered Castiel taking on Zachariah and two minions to rescue Sam and himself from torture, meanwhile getting a dirty look from Sheryl. "If Lord Castiel were to hurt me, it would only be out of necessity," she said. "And you're only human. You shouldn't interfere."

"Dean is very special and means well," Castiel told her. "He is my lover and acolyte."

"Of course I would never question your judgment, Lord," Sheryl said – with subtext perfectly clear to Dean, _But if I were to question it, I'd wonder what you see in this bozo_.

"As I was telling Dean, I wish to experience both male and female in an ecstatic worship," Castiel said. "This is why I brought you here."

"It's not enough, Lord. I want to sacrifice for you. I want to die for you."

"And you may do so someday," Castiel said with perfect calm. "But for now, all I require is your devotion, physically expressed."

She literally crawled forward and kissed his foot.

"You may rise and disrobe, Sheryl," Cas said peaceably.

She stood, stripped her nightgown off in one swift move, and leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his lips as he ran a gentle hand down her back.

"Lord Castiel?" Dean said quietly. "I thought that you cherished unforced worship? This might be more meaningful if you were to restore her free will and demonstrate to her what, what a powerful and loving god you are, persuade her, instead of – "

"Are you suggesting that I am forcing this upon her?" Castiel asked, with a glare, at the same time that Sheryl said, "You're jealous, aren't you?" with a glare.

"No," he replied, and, "No. I'm just recalling your own words. Lord."

Castiel and Sheryl were locked in each other arms, kissing passionately, totally ignoring him.

Dean tried to think of some other way to stop this train from barreling through the station, but he couldn't. He couldn't physically stop Castiel, and if Dean got him too upset – Well, his guess was, even in her right mind Sheryl would prefer being violated to being blown up. He didn't dare get too mentally negative; he had to focus on the upside. The chances of her getting a disease from an angel were nil. She wasn't wearing a wedding ring. There wasn't any physical violence involved –

"You must be beaten in order to be pure enough to be with me," Castiel told Sheryl regretfully.

"Of course."

"Stand by the bedpost and raise your arms," Cas said, and headed for Dean's belt, which was still on the floor.

Dean panicked. There was no other word for it. Because he knew one thing: He was not going to be able to stand and watch Castiel beat a woman – essentially a drugged woman – the way he himself had been beaten. It didn't matter that Cas would heal her, it didn't matter that Cas being distracted was for the greater good. At the first blow Dean was going to do something that would upset Castiel enough to cause the equivalent of a small nuclear explosion in the room.

_Sam, Bobby, now would be a good time –_

The white binding was around Sheryl's wrists, and Castiel doubled the belt.

"Lord, Lord Castiel, um, you know, or did you know, that – ah – because women's bodies are so much more, more delicate than men's, when they're supposed to be ritually scourged, um, it's only done on their butts. And legs. That's, that's human, uh, tradition."

OK, that was the most pathetically obvious load of crap – But Castiel was looking at Dean as though he had just come to some kind of fascinating realization.

"Is _that_ what the pizza man was doing to the babysitter?" Cas said.

_Dear God_, Dean thought, _if You just won't let me laugh now, I promise I'll actually start believing in You_.

One lousy pornographic movie. Not even that. Five lousy minutes of foreplay spanking in a really bad porno Cas had stumbled on in the Winchesters' motel room, and ever since, in his inimitable way, he'd been trying to puzzle out what butt-striking had to do with sex. This from a guy who'd just lectured Dean a few hours ago about how much human sexuality he'd observed. Not that much, obviously.

"Uh, yes. It's what we call role-playing. The baby-sitter was pretending to be purified for sex with, uh, the god, who the, the pizza man was pretending to be."

"That's blasphemy."

"Well, you know us humans, Cas, Lord Castiel. Some of us get off on blasphemy."

Castiel shook his head. "Well, you understand this better than I, for the time being. Actually, it makes sense for my first lover to purify my future lovers. Please do so."

"Ah. OK. Well. Then if you'll unbind her arms, Lord Castiel, I'll purify her more traditionally."

Castiel did so. "But there will be no more of this – actors pretending to be pizza men pretending to be God."

_Rain of Death Decimates Porn Industry._ "Absolutely. I mean, obviously right now you have other priorities, but I think a, um, a strongly worded threat to the producers of – "

"Excuse me," Sheryl said. "Lord Castiel told you to spank me. Are you gonna do it or what?"

Gratitude. It's a lovely thing.

Dean sat on the bed, told Sheryl, "Lie across my lap for ritual purification," and took the doubled belt from Cas. In the brief time that it took for this to happen, he realized something: When you're not terrified that someone's going to be maimed or blow up, having a soft smooth naked woman lying across your naked legs for spanking while a naked third party watches is pretty erection-inducing.

He took in and let out a settling breath. This wasn't really his particular kink – when he whaled on something, he liked it to be something that desperately needed to be good and whaled on – but he knew first-hand that a surprising number of women liked being spanked, and he'd developed a technique.

With a belt, though, it was different, and his first blow was hesitant enough to qualify as a tap.

Sheryl turned her head and, from the vicinity of his shins, Dean got a bitch-face that would have put Sammy to shame. "Seriously?"

Dean brought the belt down sharply, Sheryl squeaked, and they were off.

He began with the top of Sheryl's buttocks and spanked smartly downward, watching the spread of glowing flesh. By the time he was spanking the fullest part of her ass, she was writhing, making whimpering sounds, clutching his leg. His erection was prodding her skin, growing harder by the moment. He didn't dare look at Cas; in the corner of his eye, the – well, angel still presumably – was standing stock-still.

When he began spanking the tops of her thighs she began wriggling faster and kicking, and he needed major self-discipline to keep from just pushing her thigh down onto himself and coming all over her. The fingers of his left hand clutched her hip so hard it was probably painful. The mewls coming from her mingled with his tight-lipped quiet grunts.

Suddenly Castiel's hand was there, catching the belt as it snapped over and wrapped around his palm.

Dean stopped spanking, a little surprised to hear how loudly he was breathing.

Cas put his hand on Sheryl's butt gently, and when he lifted it the skin underneath was unreddened. He caressed her buttocks and thighs with both hands, healing the sting and redness. Not even sure why, Dean began caressing her upper back. She writhed, slowly this time, giving long soft moans.

With no effort at all, Castiel lifted Sheryl off Dean's lap, turned her over in the air and lay her face up on the bed. As he did, a wedge-shaped cushion appeared beneath her, angling her pelvis upward. She opened her arms and legs with a smile, and Dean stood so Cas could climb on top of her, covering her, settling into her.

Although he thought he knew what his role as acolyte and first lover entailed now, he was a little hesitant until Cas looked over his shoulder at Dean with a slightly amused impatience and tipped his head. "Dean."

The cushion lifted Cas' butt, and Dean climbed onto the bed behind Castiel, restraining himself from seizing and taking, with angry greed, the lean supple body beneath his. Cas had made himself as relaxed and moist as he'd made Dean earlier, but still the opening was tight and Dean held himself back, probing, clutching, tasting Cas' neck as he felt rippling movements responding to him. Cas' butt rocked, moving him against Sheryl, whose legs caressed both of the men's.

"You cannot hurt me, Dean," Cas gasped as Sheryl moaned, "Harder."

Dean's eyes closed as something animal shot through him. His fingers sank into Cas' smooth muscled arms and he drove into the heat and tightness, hearing an odd broken sound from his own throat. Castiel gripped his cock with a gasp, shuddering and moaning. Dean's thrusts pushed Cas deeper into Sheryl and now they got a rhythm going, touch and movement and sound. Sheryl's fingernails sank into Dean's shoulder and Cas was sucking on her throat and Dean felt Castiel's back moving with deep sighing breaths. Sheryl bit Cas' shoulder, looking at Dean ecstatically; he could smell her shampoo, he could smell Cas' sweat.

Cas came with racking unrhythmic spasms that rocked him back and forth hard; Sheryl's voice reached the top of her range and dropped to a lioness' roar; Dean came hard and fiercely rode Cas for all he was worth.

Finally, Dean fell to one side of the other two. Sheryl was still moving against Castiel, making little soft sounds at each aftershock. Cas' face was pressed against her neck but his right hand reached out and clamped onto Dean's upper arm.

Sheryl gave a long soft sigh and kissed Castiel, whispered, "I am blessed." Her eyes drifted shut as Cas kissed her. Castiel touched two fingers to her forehead, and she fell promptly into a deep sleep.

Still clutching Dean's arm, Cas lifted his torso a little and looked at Dean, the first time Dean had seen his face for several minutes.

His eyes were swimming with black and yellow.

"I am worshipped," he half-whispered.

Dean was trying not to tilt his head away. "Yes, Lord Castiel."

"Why do I feel despair?"

_Because you sold yourself out for unlimited power? Because your being is flooded with monster souls making you insane?_

Cas scowled. "Are you blaming my divinity?"

"No, Lord Castiel. Well, in a way. I'm wondering if your feeling is because of how fast you – got divine. It might be a strain on your physical body. Maybe you need to rest."

"Possibly. I'm beginning to understand why humans enjoy the oblivion of sleep."

And before Dean could say another word, Cas had put himself to sleep.

Dean let out a quiet, deep, unnerved sigh.

One shot. That was all they'd have. If they tried to do – whatever needed to be done – and failed, Cas only had to look at them and they, Sam and Bobby and himself, anyone who tried to resist Cas, would all be crawling across the floor to kiss Lord Castiel's foot.

Why hadn't he done that to begin with? Well, Castiel knew the Winchesters and Bobby; he probably figured their "unforced worship" was a natural result of knowing him personally. Sheryl hadn't known him before, so she needed faith to be "given" to her. But if Sam or Dean or Bobby disappointed Cas, they'd probably get a lot more than faith given to them.

Sam and Bobby probably figured that. Whatever they were planning, it was certainly something sudden, decisive, and violent.

Dean stretched his left leg over Cas' legs, found his foot resting on Sheryl's shin. He put his left arm over Cas and held on as if someone were trying to yank Cas away.

With his eyes open and looking into the room defensively, as if anyone were there to see or judge, he left a trail of soft light kisses across Castiel's face and neck.

.

"Lunch?" the counter girl at Joe's Do-Nuts was saying in an astonished tone when the cute guy pushed open the front door. "Ken, how can you want lunch? That's your seventh doughnut!"

The tall bald guy sitting at one of the four small tables said, "Exactly. So I want something different now."

The waitress, torn between incredulity at Ken and interest in Cute Guy, decided on Cute Guy. "Welcome to Joe's. Can I help you?"

"Well, I hope so." He gave her a charming smile and moved a few steps toward the counter. He had a bad limp, one leg dragging almost stiff. "My – " he hesitated as if discarding other adjectives – "brilliant brother flipped his car last night in an empty lot near here."

"I was wondering about that!" the counter girl said. "Is he OK?"

"Yeah, Heaven watches out for idiots like him. He got a ride with a friend to Salina. I was supposed to meet him there at our mom's house for lunch today, but he asked if I'd stop on my way through town and deal with the towing because he's so – " with an eye-roll – "shaken up."

"You must be the oldest. The oldest is always the responsible one. The youngest is always the rebel."

"You got that right," Cute Guy said with another grin. "Problem is, he had my smartphone in his car, and I've got to have it. It's an hour wait for the tow truck and I've got to get some business done before I go to Mom's. I can't work on my presentation, I can't research stuff I need to know, I can't make calls. What drives me nuts is that I can see the thing where it landed in the car." He slapped his stiff leg. "I just can't get at it. Is there anyone here who could help me?"

"Well – the problem is, I'm here by myself. I really shouldn't leave."

Cute Guy turned to Ken. "How about you? I heard her say you were going to lunch. Could I get you to trade two minutes' work for my mom's home cooking?"

Ken licked cherry filling off his thumb. "What's she making?"

The counter girl gave Ken a scandalized look. Cute Guy was unfazed. "Open-faced turkey sandwiches. She roasts the turkey till it practically melts in your mouth and puts it on homemade sourdough bread. Mashed potatoes smooth as cream, hot turkey gravy. She's got the trick of cooking green beans so they're not overdone or underdone. You put a little, just a little, salt on it, and I swear it's fit for the gods."

Ken stood up. "Let's go get your phone."

The car was in a lot covered mostly with barren dirt, although weeds were making forays. Another car – this one right-side-up – was parked next to it. Ken bent over to examine the Impala's interior from the side of the car nearest the street, but the young man said, "No, you can see it better from this side," and led him around to the side where the car blocked the street view of the two men.

The young man bent one knee as far as he could, extending the stiff leg in back of him, as he pointed and said, "See it?"

Ken crouched to look in the car's back window at the stuff strewn around the car's roof. He was distracted, though, by a couple of long strips of duct tape dangling in front of the window. "Where'd those come from?"

"Well," Sam said, and slammed Ken's head into the side of the car.


	3. Chapter 3

_The television show "Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc._

.

Sam grabbed one of the strips of tape as he threw Ken to the ground and sat on his chest. He covered Ken's eyes with the tape, pressing the sides of Ken's head as hard and fast as he could, then grabbed the second strip of tape and used the heel of his palm to force Ken's mouth closed, slapping down the tape and securing it with both hands. A soul had flown out of Castiel's eye earlier, so Sam assumed that was the preferred entrance and exit for Purgatory creatures, but if they could use the mouth as well, like demons, he'd make sure Ken's creature was well penned in.

At first stunned, Ken tried to yell and then began thrashing. Whatever the creature had been on Earth, it had enough power now to turn Ken's hands into claws. Since Sam was sitting on Ken's chest, his legs pinning Ken's arms to the ground behind him, he didn't see the transformation. But he felt the talons sink into his thighs.

Sam muffled his yell, reached for the handcuffs dangling over his waistband under his jacket, then gave up. The claws had gone through denim and skin and he didn't want them in muscle. He leaped forward off of Ken, swearing as the claws slashed, and Ken staggered to his feet, running as he tried to pull the duct tape off his eyes.

Sam brought him down with a flying tackle, sat on his back and re-sealed the duct tape. He grabbed the waving clawed right hand and, as the left one predictably went for the duct tape again, slammed a cuff on the right wrist. It was harder than hell to drag the empty cuff across Ken's back while he grabbed Ken's left wrist, yanking the claw away from Ken's face and wrenching it behind his back, but Sam managed it, and now the Purgatory creature was handcuffed, yelling incomprehensibly through duct tape, and trapped.

Sam took in a long breath and looked around for witnesses. So far, so good. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a roll of duct tape and the demon-killing knife. He wrapped the tape around Ken's head several times, avoiding his nose. Then he shifted to sitting on the ground, grabbed one of Ken's kicking feet, and cut him sharply on the outside of his ankle.

Ken's higher-pitched yell showed that he'd felt it. "OK," Sam said breathlessly, "you're trapped in that body and I've got to immobilize it. I can either tape your feet together or cut one of 'em off. Your decision."

Ken moved his feet together and stopped kicking. "Good choice," Sam said. It was a good choice for him, actually; he had no intention of actually cutting the guy's foot off, but he really didn't want to go through another fight with the ankles. He used more duct tape to bind the feet.

"Stop struggling," he said. "Those cuffs'll tighten up and cut off the circulation to your hands. It hurts like hell and doesn't get you loose."

He looked around again for witnesses. He had his U.S. Marshal's badge on his belt, if there were any, but there weren't.

Still half-bent over, taking advantage of such cover as the Impala gave, he dragged the Ken creature to Bobby's car and, with swearing and pushing, managed to get him onto the floor of the front seat. He grabbed a sleeping bag from the back seat and, as he was about to throw it over Ken, paused.

Two hot spots of yellow glowed behind the duct tape over Ken's eyes.

"I'll be damned," Sam said. "That stuff _will_ hold anything."

He threw the blanket over the Ken creature, shut the door and got to the driver's seat fast. He sucked in a pained breath when he sat down and his jeans stretched over his legs, looked down and saw blood seeping through the slashes in the fabric.

"Stay still," he told the Ken creature. "I'll see you if you don't."

He started the car and drove, as quickly as possible without attracting attention, away from the empty lot and out of town.

.

"Bobby. As always, your taste is exquisite."

Crowley was standing in the front door of the abandoned farmhouse, looking at the floor, ceiling, and one of the walls. Bobby was sitting on a stepladder by another wall, a spray paint can in one hand. The white air-filtering mask over his nose and mouth was covered with a coat of minuscule colored particles.

Crowley, still standing in the doorway, waved his hand at the mask. "Is that adequate protection?"

Bobby pulled the mask off and got off the stepladder. "Prob'ly not. But you can see I've got the doors and windows open, and I'm takin' a lot of breaks. Plus I'm not planning on doin' this the rest of my life. Thanks for caring, though. Makes me feel all warm inside. Is this the lady?"

"It is. She'll come in when I come in, and I'll come in when I'm certain there aren't any devil's traps around." Crowley was still looking over the room carefully, and as his glance went up to the ceiling he smiled. "Oh. Nice, Bobby."

"It better be nice. We're only gonna have one shot at it." He looked at the woman whose eyes he could see over Crowley's shoulder. "Come on in, ma'am. You got nothin' to fear from devil's traps."

"She's my contribution to this little project, you can have her when I say you can." Crowley finished his scanning. "It's not in here. Where is it, Bobby?"

"Like you said, right now we got bigger worries than the likes of you."

Bobby let out a patient sigh as Crowley, with one last look around, stepped into the room and then waved at the woman.

"Will I track up the paint?" she asked, looking at the floor.

"Naw, I did that first. It's all dry."

She stepped in, not looking at Crowley. She was about forty, fat, and angry. It took Bobby a moment to realize that the anger wasn't situational – this was her habitual expression. Her jaw was clenched, her eyes slightly narrowed, and there was a line carved deep between her eyebrows.

It was hard to tell why she was angry. She didn't look sick, she wasn't maimed or ugly. Bobby was no expert on women's clothing, but being a hunter requires you to know a little of everything; he knew that the clothes she was wearing and the small leather purse with a wrist strap were the kind of thing rich ladies wear to outdoor events, and that the tennis bracelet on her wrist was made of real gold and diamonds.

But her fingernails were bitten to the quick.

"'Scuse me, I need to take a look at your veins," he said, taking one of her arms. Presumably in preparation for having her arm cut, she'd worn a blouse whose sleeves were rolled to just below the elbow. Pretending to eye her veins professionally, Bobby pushed the sleeves up above the elbow and found what he was looking for on her left arm – the mark of a damned soul.

"Damn it, Crowley, I said she gets released."

"When she gives blood. She hasn't given it yet."

"We need to bleed her right before the big event. You and Castiel might've been able to keep blood from clotting while you argued about things, but Sam and me aren't magical."

Crowley spread his hands. "I'm right here."

"Yeah, and I'm sure you'll stay right here. You think I don't know what you're planning, Crowley? You're figuring some way to swallow those souls as fast as they come out of Castiel. God knows where you're gonna be or what you're gonna be doing ten minutes before we reopen Purgatory. If Cas blows us all up and she still has that mark on her arm, you get her soul anyway, and that wasn't the deal. Take it off."

Crowley shrugged slightly, and the mark disappeared.

The woman gasped.

"Pleasure doin' business with you," Bobby said dryly to Crowley, then to the woman, "Come on in the kitchen, let's get you outta these fumes."

She was still staring at her arm. Bobby could have been leading her over a cliff.

"What's your name?" he asked as he brought her to the kitchen window over the sink.

"Rose."

"Pretty name."

She gave a short sharp laugh. "Right."

"You know what's goin' on here, Rose?"

"You need to cast some kind of spell, and you need some of my blood for it."

"It's nothin' evil. Even though Crowley's involved. Somethin' real bad has happened, bad enough to scare Crowley and humans too. Your blood is gonna help us set it right."

She gave a little shuddering sigh. "OK."

Bobby shifted on his feet. "So. Um. It's really important – I mean, I wouldn't normally, but I gotta ask – "

"Spit it out, Bobby," Crowley said from the doorway. "'Are you really a virgin?'"

Bobby looked at him. "Aren't you busy lookin' for devil's traps?"

"Finished in there. Looking in here now." Indeed, Crowley's gaze was searching everything from the old brown water-leak spots on the ceiling to the pattern of the dirty linoleum. "Why don't you just ask me, Bobby? I've owned Rosie's soul for almost ten years now. I know everything about her."

"I am," Rose said, fast and flat. "Not just a technical virgin. Actual honest-to-God. Furthest I ever got was heavy petting and that was so long ago I hardly remember it. If anything goes wrong it won't be my fault."

Bobby patted her arm, though nothing in her attitude seemed to request comfort. "That's mark's gone now. Even if something goes wrong, he can't put it back on you unless you make another deal with him."

"Not to mention the fact that if anything goes wrong we probably won't be around to apportion blame," Crowley said.

"Not to mention that." There were several dozen bottles of water on the counter, along with salt canisters, several rolls of toilet paper and paper towels, a first-aid kit, and a lifetime supply of candles, among other items. Bobby handed a water bottle to Rose. "Drink a lot of that between now and then, get your blood vessels good and plumped up. I'm gonna want you to take some aspirin too. Unfortunately the plumbing doesn't work, so we're gonna have to be pretty primitive today. But everything'll be back to normal and we'll all be outta here by midnight, God willing."

"Who willing?" Crowley asked in amusement.

"Hey, can anyone help me out here?" Sam's voice called from the front room.

"Don't bother the lady," Bobby said brusquely to Crowley, and went to stand in the doorway. Crowley grinned at Rose and moved to stand next to her. "Have you got the Purgatory creature?" Bobby asked from the doorway.

"Got him," Sam's voice replied, "but he's all tied up. Can anyone help me bring him in?"

Bobby turned to Crowley. "I've gotta get back to painting. Want to help Sam bring in the guy?"

Crowley raised his eyebrows. "And the last time you heard of a king lifting and toting was – when?"

"You know, Crowley, I've had about enough of your attitude," Bobby said, walking directly over to him and getting in his face. "Yeah, I know you've helped us out a lot here. But you've got as much at stake here as we do, maybe more, so it's not like we're charity cases, and I'm sick of – "

Crowley's eyes glowed red, and Rose shriveled a little where she stood, as if she were too frightened to move. He strode forward, backing Bobby into the front room. "Don't tempt me, Bobby, to blot you out. Usually you're quite amusing, but I'm not going to – "

"Whoa! Whoa!" Sam got between them, pushing Bobby toward the corner near the stepladder and Crowley in the opposite direction. "We have way too much to do before moonrise. Crowley, stop aggravating Bobby. For a guy who goes on and on about being kingly, you're an awful lot like a three-year-old."

"You – " Crowley stalked toward Sam now, and Bobby moved out of the corner before he was squashed by the moose and a pissed-off demon – "and your semi-literate junk dealer will both stop treating me with contempt. You are not the bosses here. Got it?"

"Got it," Bobby said, and both of the others looked over at him. "Didn't mean to start a war here, either of you. I just haven't had any sleep."

Crowley stared at him for a moment before his eyes returned to normal. "Well, you should get some. You're bloody presumptuous without it."

Sam slipped out of the corner and Crowley leaned against the wall, arms folded. "OK. Now. Can someone help me drag in this poor guy with the Purgatory creature in him?"

"Don't think I can, Sam," Bobby said regretfully. "I gotta stay in here and make sure Crowley doesn't try anything cute with the devil's trap."

Crowley stared at Bobby, took a step forward, stopped, swore, looked up at the ceiling and back at Bobby. "Well. Aren't you clever."

Both Bobby and Sam instantly launched into an aw-shucks schtick, toeing the ground and pointing at each other. "Naw, he's really the clever – " "Actually, he's the one who was –"

"How long did it take you to plan this?"

"Not too long," Sam said. "We knew you'd look for devil's traps, so Bobby painted a lot of circles on the ceiling in all four corners with symbols in them. This particular one was an incomplete devil's trap. Then we figured, one of us will get you in another room while the other one finishes it, and then provoke you into backing us into this room and this corner, like trying to keep you out of that corner was our whole goal. Hopefully you'd be mad enough not to notice the slight change on the ceiling. When I came in just now I heard you guys in the kitchen and I figured, well, let's go for it."

"He could have killed you," came a shocked female voice from the kitchen door.

All three of them looked over at Rose. "He coulda," Bobby admitted, "but we both figured he'd have more fun scaring us and puttin' us in our place than killin' us."

"I wouldn't count on that again," Crowley said coldly.

Sam turned to face Crowley again, and suddenly the demon-killing knife was in his hand. "On your orders, demons kidnapped our friend Lisa and her young son," Sam said evenly. "They murdered her boyfriend. One of them possessed her and tried to kill her. And just because we sometimes have to kill some poor bastard possessed by a demon, that doesn't give you a pass on what you did to Eleanor Visyak. We're not going to try to kill you, but we don't have to treat you like an honored guest."

Crowley just looked at him. Sam handed the knife to Bobby and said, "I'll be back in a moment."

"I can help," Rose said.

Sam gave her a brilliant smile. "Hi. Didn't mean to ignore you. I'm Sam. You must be th— "

His tongue stopped in between his teeth while "the virgin" hovered in the air.

"Rose," she said quietly.

"Rose. Pleased to meet you. Yeah, I can handle the guy's weight, but if you'll keep his feet off the ground we can get him in faster."

Sam and Rose went to the front door. Bobby stuck the knife in his belt and picked up a spray-paint can.

"So you're generously allowing me to live," Crowley said. "And what great favor are you going to grant the creature that actually killed Eleanor?"

"You know as well as we do, Crowley," Bobby said. "Castiel probably isn't gonna survive this thing."

.

Sheryl was still sound asleep when Castiel waved his hand to put her nightgown back on her and waved again to send her home.

"She'll wake up in her own bed," he said, a marked melancholy in his tone.

Dean studied him for a moment, patted the empty half of the mattress. "Well, get on back to your own bed, then."

"I have so much to do, Dean," Castiel said. "I must remake Heaven and Earth. I can't spend the rest of eternity enjoying myself with you."

Dean put a pillow upright behind his back and sat up. "Yeah, I see your point. But sit with me while you plan it out. You know, get your tactics arranged in advance."

Castiel gave Dean a very slight smile. "You just don't want me to leave."

"No," Dean said earnestly. "I don't want you to leave."

Castiel put a pillow against the headboard and got into bed like Dean, sitting up. "The first consideration is Raphael's followers. I can give humans faith in my divinity, and I'm sure I could do the same with angels, but it might require an exhausting expenditure of power, and I'm not sure it would be worth it. In addition, I am surrounded by subversives in my own ranks. You're right, Dean, I should think this through first. The primary consideration is the treason within my own forces, then the hatred of Raphael's forces. It will be difficult to sort out those genuinely loyal from those with weak traitorous spirits." He sighed. "It may be more efficient to kill them all and begin over."

"Kill – all the angels? But, Lord Castiel, isn't, isn't that kind of a – poor reward for the ones who were loyal to you?"

Castiel gave him a placid smile. "Those who have faith in my divinity will understand. Those without faith must die anyway. I will – "

His forehead wrinkled, and he looked troubled.

"I will create new angels. I admit, Dean, I'm not sure how. Creation – "

Dean watched him as he thought.

"Creation is far more difficult than destruction. My Father was endlessly creative, but without Him – "

He fell into a brooding silence. Dean stroked Castiel's arm, watching his eyes carefully.

.

While Bobby and Sam finished painting the front room, Rose sat on one of two dirty dining room chairs and kept an eye on Ken, making sure he didn't try to get away, or suffocate. Actually, after a certain amount of struggling and, presumably, swearing, he fell asleep.

A couple of times she joined either Sam or Bobby during their frequent breathers on the front porch. As night approached, they lit the front and dining rooms with a combination of pillar candles and blackout lanterns. Bobby went out for burgers at the Dairy Queen Brazier in Bootback. They ate on the front porch, Bobby and Rose sitting on the chairs and Sam leaning against the porch railing where he could keep an eye on Crowley through the open door.

"Very rude to eat in front of others, you know," Crowley called.

"I asked you if you wanted anything," Bobby said. "You said – now what was it, Sam – "

"'Bugger off,'" Sam supplied.

"Yeah. Figured that meant no."

By the time the moon was high, they'd finished the painting and it had all dried. Ken had been moved to the kitchen and Rose was sitting in the dining room when Bobby came in with a lantern, a first-aid kit, a knife, and a Mason jar. "'Bout that time, Rose. You want us to take Ken first, or – "

"No. Let's get it over with." She stuck out her arm, and averted her gaze as Bobby bound her upper arm tightly and then used the knife. She let out a yelp, then immediately said, "Sorry."

"Naw, you're doin' good." He rested the Mason jar on her lap and her elbow on the lip of the jar, sitting opposite her and holding the jar with both hands. "Squeeze your fist – yeah, like that. Good. We'll be there in no time."

She nodded, her jaw set.

"I got a question," he said, "but it's kinda personal."

"More personal than the virgin thing?" she asked dryly. Not looking directly ahead at where the red rivulet was spilling into the jar meant that she also didn't meet Bobby's gaze.

"Yeah – Well, I needed to know that. This is just – you can tell me to eat dirt, if you want. But I'd kinda like to know why you sold your soul."

The line between her eyebrows deepened, and she shook her head a little.

"You're right. It's none o' my – "

"It was my fiance," she said. "Can you believe I still call him that? After everything? It's like I've got to make sure everyone knows I was engaged once. Pathetic."

"Don't forget to squeeze your fist."

"I just – People always try to make it sound like sex is so great, you know? And to me, all it ever sounded like was painful. And humiliating. If – if I – if I was going to do that, I wanted it to be with someone I could trust, a husband, someone who – "

Her voice choked off. It was harder when she resumed. "I wanted someone to love me. Me. Believe that?"

"Course I do."

"I don't. Stupid. Well, Tommy came along. And we had such a good time. He proposed, and I thought, see, I'm not that unlovable after all. Got the dress and everything. Then I heard him on the phone – " only now did her voice begin shaking – "with his girlfriend. Discussing what time he'd be over that night. After he got back from the play Moneybags wanted to go to."

Bobby shook his head.

"I knew then, no one would ever love me. I hurt. All the time. I wanted him to feel like I did. My friends at church all kept telling me, stop nursing that hate, let it go, let something positive come out of it. So I stopped going to church. And then when I saw the announcement in the paper that Tommy and his girlfriend got married, I started thinking about getting help from – other quarters."

"And Crowley showed up."

"He told me there were technicalities. Told me how to make a box and bury it at a crossroads. Told me to think carefully about what I wanted, but I already knew." Her voice was harsh. "I wanted his marriage destroyed and I wanted him never to find love, like I never will."

Bobby stared at her in disbelief. "You sold your soul into eternal torture to break up someone's marriage?"

"You know, Crowley didn't really emphasize the eternal torture part. And I figured I was suffering the tortures of the damned anyway. Why not?"

"It worked, I suppose."

"Oh yeah. Tommy's marriage broke up. And he never found love. He bounces around from woman to woman. From what I hear, it doesn't seem to bother him much."

"So – you're not gonna do anything that stupid again, right? 'Cause if you need someone to emphasize the eternal torture part, I know a couple of guys who can tell you about it in detail."

"No. No, I won't." She looked directly at Bobby. "So it's really true? I'm really not going to Hell?"

"Not because of the deal, anyway. It's all between you and God now. Crowley's got no say in it."

She nodded. Then a little choked sound came out of her, then another. Her tense angry expression dissolved as tears spilled suddenly out of her eyes.

Awkwardly, he patted her shoulder, and she recoiled from the touch. "It's OK. I don't need – I just feel – I feel like I've been holding this in for ten years."

Then she made a little sound in her throat and started falling off the chair.

Bobby's hand shot out and braced her while he gripped the jar with his other hand. "Whoa, OK, just a minute." He put the jar down carefully to one side, then stood to grab her shoulders and guide her down to the floor.

She lay with a dazed look while he slapped a cotton pad onto the knife cut and spun the lid onto the Mason jar. "Hang in there, Rose, don't get shocky on me. We got orange juice and cookies, just like at the Red Cross. Sound good?"

As he cut the binding above her elbow and began wrapping the knife wound with gauze, she asked, "Did you get all the blood you needed?"

"Yeah. Faster than the blood center, too. You did good. Just lie there for awhile."

Sam appeared in the doorway. "Is everything OK?"

"Yeah, it's OK." He stood and beckoned Sam into the front room, lowering his voice, as Crowley watched with interest.

"When we're ready to go, I'm gonna give Rose the keys to the car and have her drive away a few blocks."

Sam's mouth quirked. "There aren't really 'blocks' out here."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah. Wish we could do the same for Ken."

"I do too, but he's gotta be here. Do you think a few blocks will be far enough away?"

"If it's not," Sam said, "no distance will be."

Bobby nodded.

"Oh! Almost forgot," and Sam dug two anti-possession charms out of his pocket. "One for Rose, one for Ken."

"Good. You get the juice and cookies for Rose, give her one o' those, then set up the ladder and paintbrush. I'll be back out soon."

Bobby sat on the kitchen floor beside the Ken creature, who was still blindfolded and gagged with duct tape. One of his wrists was duct-taped to pipes under the sink, one handcuffed to the handle of the oven door (which was opened, so that his wrist was only a few inches above the ground), and his feet were still duct-taped together.

Bobby stuck an anti-possession charm in the pocket of Ken's shirt, which had a flap that snapped. The double yellow glow where Ken's eyes would be showed again behind the duct tape.

Bobby took the lid off the Mason jar. "Ken, I know you're in there. This is gonna be a crappy end to a crappy day, but we're gonna get that thing out o' you real soon."

Muffled verbalization from the Ken creature. It didn't sound flattering.

"Yeah, same to you," Bobby said tiredly, and picked up the knife.

.

"I first realized that I loved you after Raphael destroyed me," Castiel told Dean. "When I was alive again, my first thought was that I wanted to see you again, and then I realized that I wanted to hold you in my arms and kiss you. It took me some time to come to grips with the realization."

They were still sitting in bed, but there was an addition: a long tabletop that floated in the air, without moving, about six inches above their laps. The remainders of a sumptuous feast were scattered across the tabletop.

"Here," Dean said, "have some more of the blueberry."

He pushed a half-eaten pie down to a spot in front of Cas. A chunk of the pie disappeared, and Cas chewed it slowly, savoring it.

Then he said, "You're quite correct, Dean. All eating places must offer pie. That will definitely be part of the new world."

"And good rock through the speakers."

"I'm not sure of that. I'm fond of classical music myself. The way that its complexity and polyphony resolve to a harmonious whole."

"OK, OK. You're the deity." Dean grinned.

Castiel shot a look at him, then looked back at the pie with a little sigh. "When did you first realize that you loved me, Dean?"

"I – you know, I don't know if there was – a particular moment. I just – it kind of grew on me. One day – "

Castiel sat up straighter, his head back and his eyes bright.

"What is it?"

"Your brother is calling me," Castiel said with a smile. "He and Bobby have decorated a temple in my honor."

Dean's stomach roiled. _It'll be great to see Sam and Bobby again_, he deliberately thought, and made the thought drown out everything else in his head.

The table disappeared. "We should go."

"Sure. Ah – mind if I put some pants on first?"

"That's a good idea. I too should be appropriately clad."

Dean pulled on his jeans and looked at Castiel. He was wearing a long robe that swirled and flickered in yellow and black. It changed colors and patterns between the bursts of yellow and black, but didn't really settle until it became all white.

"I cannot think of an appropriate design," Castiel said a little helplessly.

"Well – all white's good. It looks religious."

_Sacrificial_ – the word popped into his mind and he shouted it down. _Great to see Sam and Bobby again._

"You're right," Castiel said with a smile. "White is good."

Then there was the queasiness Dean felt flying Angel Airlines, and then there was something horribly wrong with his vision.

It took him a moment to realize: It wasn't his vision, it was the room.

The first time he and Bobby had met Castiel they'd prepared by spray-painting the inside of a huge shed with every evil-resistant symbol from every culture they knew – and between them, they knew a lot. The resulting wall wildness had nothing on this. The room was considerably smaller – living room of a house, it looked like – but there weren't four square inches of any surface that didn't bear part of a spray-painted line or arc. Loops met whorls met lines that cut through spirals that spun around dots, all over the walls, ceiling, floors, the old-fashioned wide-slatted blinds that hung over the windows, the doors, and a sheet hung presumably where an arch led into another room.

Not only did the chaos of shapes obliterate any chance of seeing a pattern, or anything even aesthetic, but it was difficult even to see individual shapes, because each was in two or three different colors. There were at least seven or eight colors overall, entirely obliterating any hope of seeing pattern or consistency. It looked insane.

"It's beautiful," Castiel breathed.

"It's very small," Sam said humbly, "but it was what we could do quickly. Later we'll create something greater."

Dean wrenched his gaze from the décor and discovered a bunch of stuff. Crowley was standing in one corner – looking royally pissed – under the only discernible pattern in the room, a devil's trap. Some poor handcuffed guy, blindfolded and gagged with duct tape, lay along the wall next to Crowley. By the opposite wall, Bobby knelt with a butane candle lighter, lighting what looked like seventy or eighty tealight candles on what seemed to be a low altar. Those candles and a couple of lanterns in the corners gave off the only light in the room.

"This would be the beginning of an altar," Sam said, standing back and beckoning Castiel closer to the candles. They spelled out two words, "LORD CAST," and Bobby was beginning to light the candles that made up the I. "You'll have to tell us what other symbols would be appropriate."

"And these – " Castiel turned and indicated Crowley and the bound man – "these are sacrifices?"

Dean noticed a flicker on the floor. The candlelight was reflecting off of a thin shiny semicircle on the floor, something wetter and narrower than spray paint, that arced around the space where Sam had led Castiel before fading into the darkness.

"Well, offerings," Sam said. "I know you said that you had plans for Crowley. We thought you might want to begin them now."

"It is, as you say, humble. But I appreciate the offerings of humble people."

"Lord Castiel – " Sam extended his hand – "may I – "

Castiel stretched out his hand in return. Sam took it and knelt before him to kiss it. Then he looked up at Castiel and moved their palms together, interlinking their fingers.

Could preventing Cas from snapping his fingers – the way he'd destroyed Raphael – keep him from committing any other kind of mayhem? Well, it couldn't hurt. Dean stepped into the thin half-visible circle on the floor and, standing behind Castiel, took his other hand and interlaced their fingers.

"Rise, Sam," Castiel said.

Sam stood. Over Castiel's shoulder he gave Dean a look which might not have said much to anyone else, but which Dean correctly interpreted as, _Thanks for being so quick to catch on._

Standing between them, Castiel pulled Dean's hand around him and held Sam's and Dean's hands together against his chest, closed his eyes and sighed.

Then he said, "You may – "

"Aperta tandem," Bobby said, and touched the lighter to the floor.

Flame leaped around the circle of holy oil in an instant. Castiel's eyes flew open. He glanced at the circle of fire and then flung Sam across the room. Sam crashed into the wall by the bound man and slid to the floor.

Castiel looked incredulous and raised his free hand, not even seeming to notice Dean grabbing desperately for it. "You cannot –"

Then he gasped and looked upward.

On the ceiling, the lines and loops of the Purgatory-opening sigil – and, obviously, only those lines and loops – must have been painted over with blood. Because the sigil was coming to life, emitting fierce yellow light that looked as if the sigil were splitting the ceiling along its lines and the sun was directly on the other side.

Castiel's free hand shot upward. "Stop!"


	4. Chapter 4

_The television show "Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc._

.

A rumble like continuous far-away thunder was his answer, and the sigil light became blinding to look at. Castiel's head snapped back so far that his face was parallel with the ceiling, and two thin yellow lasers drove out of his pupils, unstopping, straight into the glowing Purgatory portal.

"Stop," Castiel gasped, his eyes wide and unable to close.

Bobby was checking on Sam, but Sam just gasped, "Scissors." Bobby groped around on the floor, found a pair of scissors that had obviously been put there earlier, and cut the duct tape blindfolding their prisoner. Sam yanked the tape off and the guy yelled in pain; then a yellow bolt of light shot from his eye and disappeared into the brilliant sigil.

The rumble was a roar. Castiel collapsed. Dean could only break his fall, helping him to the floor while avoiding at all costs the painful thin streams of power blasting from Castiel's eyes. Cas emitted a broken wheezing sound like an old man's. The power wasn't fleeing him fast enough; Dean saw with horror bumps leaping outward and subsiding on the skin of Cas' face, his cheekbones and temples and just below the eyes, glowing yellow, revealing the bones of Castiel's skull.

Dean wasn't going to watch Cas' head come apart. "Sam! Where's the sword?"

Castiel couldn't see, but he heard Dean's demand and raised his arms like a child defending himself. Sam got around the circle, reached under the altar, pulled out the angel-killing sword and, holding the blade, extended the hilt to Dean over the flames.

Cas thought the sword would be stabbed into his heart. His head was swelling and he was beginning to convulse, but he held his arms in front of his chest and said softly, "Dean – why?"

Ducking the fiery beams from Cas' eyes, Dean lay beside the angel, threw his left arm over Cas' arms and chest, sucked in a breath, put the point of the sword to Castiel's left eye, pushed it in and twisted.

A blast of power an inch in diameter roared out of Castiel's empty eye socket, spraying clear jelly and blood and sending the sword flying. Dean covered his head. The entire house shook as power left Castiel twenty times more quickly than it had before, still headed straight for the Purgatory portal.

Castiel screamed. The ceiling in the corner cracked, breaking the devil's trap. Crowley leaped toward the beams of power and tried to yell something Latin, but Sam blocked his way and hit him in the mouth with the handle of the demon-killing knife. Bobby covered Ken as pieces of the ceiling began falling.

Then it was over.

The last beams of light left Castiel, the house stopped shaking, and the sigil went dark, blending into all the other spray painting on the crumbling ceiling.

Two of the blackout lanterns had been knocked over and closed, and the tealight candles were scattered, making the room even darker. Dean lifted his head and looked around. "Sam? You OK?"

"I'm good," Sam said confidently, giving a dark grin to Crowley, who looked murderous but also aware of the knife. "Bobby?"

"I'm fine. Ken seems OK. Give me the keys to the handcuffs when you've got a moment."

"Cas?" Sam asked.

"He's alive," Dean said.

"OK, Crowley," Sam said. "As promised, your head start."

"Am I supposed to be grateful?" Crowley spat. "Don't think I'll forget this." And he vanished.

Dean heard it, but didn't care. His focus was on Castiel, who lay trembling and silent, one eye open wide with horror, a hideous dark hole where the other eye should have been. His robe must have been composed solely of his power; it was gone, and he was naked again, his skin faintly yellowish in the light of the holy fire.

"Heal your eye, Cas," Dean said. "Come on. Please."

Cas' good eye continued looking somewhere far away from Dean. Sam scrambled to pick up the candles, many still lit, that were rolling around on the floor, but kept watching what was happening in the circle. Bobby began freeing Ken, who looked exhausted and sick.

"I know you've got enough angel mojo left in you, Cas." Lying beside him, Dean put one hand on Castiel's chest and one on his head. "Heal your eye. Please. Don't let – I know you can do it."

Standing with only the flame between himself and the angel, Sam suddenly yelled sharply, "Castiel!"

Dean started and looked up as Sam continued barking, "Soldier! Heal your eye! That's an order!"

Dean shot Sam a look that said, _Great thought_. Sam shot Dean a look that said, _Thanks, and should we be freaked out about how intimately you're lying with him?_

Dean looked back at Cas' eye, and for a moment despaired. Then Bobby reopened one of the lanterns, and Dean saw the light reflecting off of something wet in the empty eye socket, a gelatinous mass that was filling a filmy cup that grew across and thickened beneath a mending eyelid, resolving to the white sclera and black pupil and startling blue iris of Castiel's uninjured eye.

Dean gave a huge sigh. Putting the last of the candles on the "altar," Sam took off his flannel shirt and handed it to Dean over the flame. Dean draped it lengthwise over Cas like a blanket, then lay back down beside him with his hand over Castiel's heart.

Very slightly, Sam raised his eyebrows.

"Why was Crowley so mad?"

Everyone but Castiel jumped. Ken was sitting upright on the floor, looking at Bobby.

"You know his name?"

"Yeah. I could hear everything, you know. I just couldn't – I had no control over my own body." He gave a little shaking laugh. "I've never been so scared."

"I know the feeling," Sam and Bobby said almost in unison.

"That was – something out of Purgatory? I know it was completely determined not to go back somewhere, and you guys kept talking about Purgatory, and that Crowley guy with the English accent was helping."

"Yeah, he's an altruist," Sam said.

"You saw all that power shooting out of the guy on the floor?" Bobby asked. "Crowley wanted all that power in himself."

Ken looked across at what he could see of Castiel beyond the flames. "Why?" he asked explosively.

"Prob'ly thinks he could've handled it better than Castiel and ruled the world."

"Everyone always thinks they can handle it better," Sam said ruefully.

"But he didn't start swearing at you until you said that – Latin chant, or whatever it was."

Dean looked up at Bobby. "When did you say the spell? I only heard a couple words."

"Most of it, just before Sam called you. I figured if I said most of the incantation and nothing else until I finished it, other people could say anything in between and it wouldn't matter. We didn't really think the holy fire would stop Castiel, but hopefully slow him down if the spell took a moment to kick in."

"Well, you gotta know Crowley's happy to have that power out of Cas," Dean said. "So why'd he start swearing?"

Bobby chuckled. "He wasn't expecting a little change I made in the spell. I established that in the future Purgatory's portal can only be opened if the demon Crowley enters therein and remains."

"And Crowley just wanted all that crap that went back into Purgatory," Ken said, figuring it out. "He doesn't actually want to be in Purgatory."

"Oh, no," Sam chortled.

"Well, that was pretty smart," Ken said.

"Thanks," Bobby said.

"What have I done?" Castiel whispered, but only Dean, who looked back at him and clutched his arm in response, heard.

Ken looked at Sam. "Sorry I – clawed you."

"Sorry I banged your head into the car. You've got a beautiful lump there."

"Don't care. Didn't care even then. I was just so damn happy that someone knew something was wrong with me."

"What have I done?" Castiel whispered again. He was still looking somewhere far away, not meeting Dean's gaze.

"Don't think about it right now," Dean said. "Just heal up."

Light coming from outside showed against the blinds over the front windows, then went out. Bobby stood. Sam kicked the angel-killing sword back under the altar and used the knife to pull the blinds a bit aside and look out. Then he smiled, stuck the knife in the back of his belt, turned and opened the front door.

"Are you guys OK?" Rose asked. "Oh!"

Since, when she'd left, the room hadn't featured a circle of fire with two men lying in it, one shirtless and one covered only with a shirt and looking like he'd just witnessed a mass murder, her surprise was understandable.

Sam gave an exhausted little laugh and sat on the floor. "Yeah, we're OK. Everything went the way it was supposed to."

"It did? The ground shook! The house glowed! That was supposed to happen?"

"Yep," Bobby said.

"Where's – um – where's – "

"You can say his name," Bobby said. "It won't conjure him or anything. Crowley left."

She gave a sharp sigh and looked around, giving a double-take to Dean and Castiel. "You all – all – look exhausted."

"The guy in the jeans is my brother, Dean," Sam said, and Dean looked up at Rose. "The other guy is Castiel. He was the one with the Purgatory souls in him. Dean, this is Rose, and that's Ken."

"Hi," Dean said. "How'd you guys get snarled up in this?"

"Ken was possessed by a Purgatory creature. Rose, um – "

"I'm a virgin," she said almost drolly.

"Dean," Castiel said quietly. "Give me the sword."

"Yeah, I don't think so." He looked over at Sam. "You guys better get someplace and get some sleep. I'm gonna make sure Cas doesn't do anything stupid."

"Where do you come from, Rose?" Bobby asked.

"Wetherington, Ohio."

"Great. Well, hopefully they've got a spare room at the motel for tonight, but then how are we gonna get you back to Ohio?"

"I brought my clutch. I've got ID and credit cards and some cash."

"Good. Tomorrow either Sam or I will swing you by the airport in Kansas City."

"You do it, Bobby," Sam said. "I'm staying here tonight."

"I'll be fine, Sam," Dean said.

"I'm not so sure about that. By now the Impala's in the Bootback PD impound lot."

Dean groaned and covered his face with a hand.

"I'll come back tomorrow with my car and get you guys," Ken said. "Bobby, where do you go after you take her to the airport?"

"Back to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Lookin' for 1967 Chevy bumpers."

Dean groaned again.

"I got a sleeping bag in the car, I'll bring it in." With which, and an enormous yawn, Bobby went.

"Thank you again," Ken said to Sam. "I mean – God, that doesn't even say it. Just – "

Sam grinned and shrugged. "It's what we do."

"Really? The Purgatory thing happens a lot?"

Sam laughed. "No. This was kind of unusual even for us."

Rose had knelt by the holy fire, looking into Cas' horrified eyes over the flame. "I hope – I hope you feel better soon."

Castiel looked at her wordlessly for a moment, swallowed. "Your kindness speaks well of you. But I never will."

"Cas – " Dean began.

"They needed my blood to open Purgatory," Rose said. "Crowley did. And they made a bargain that my deal with Crowley would be broken if I gave them the blood."

Dean looked at her, a little surprised.

"So I don't know why you did what you did – but, because of it, I'm not going to Hell in two months." She gave a little gasping sigh; there were tears in her eyes. "Maybe I won't ever. I mean, if you feel rotten – I hope that helps."

Sam stood to give the heavy woman a hand off the floor as Bobby came back in with the sleeping bag and handed it to Sam.

"Hey, Ken?" Dean looked up. "When you come back tomorrow, do you have a pair of pants you could give Castiel? I have the feeling that healing his eye just about exhausted his power for awhile."

"Kidding me? You guys could have my whole wardrobe."

"You two head on out to the car, I'll be right there," Bobby said, and they did so. "Sam – damn good work, boy. Dean, thanks for givin' us the chance to get it done."

"Bobby." Castiel sounded like a ghost. "Dr. Visyak – it was me."

"I know. I also know why you did it. I'm tryin' to focus on that. Gimme some time."

Castiel didn't respond, and with a final, "See you at my place" directed to the brothers, Bobby left.

Sam offered the sleeping bag to Dean, who shook his head and sat up. "You take it. I'm afraid he'll try to use it to smother the fire."

Sam went into the kitchen, and a moment later announced, "That's it. I rule," as he came back out holding salt canisters. "Enough for a ring around you guys and another one around me. Do I know how to plan or what?"

"Yeah. A lot of times girls are better at detail work."

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

Sam poured salt around the holy fire, its crystals glistening. Castiel said, "Dean, you must release me. This is not mere self-pity. I must atone for the blasphemous horror I have committed, have become."

"When your idea of atonement doesn't involve the angel-killing sword, we'll talk."

"What I did – it preceded the opening of Purgatory. I willingly joined forces with a demon. I hurt Sam. I destroyed – "

"Yeah. Not arguing. You did some bad crap. Is killing yourself going to change any of that?"

"You don't understand." Castiel seemed to be straining to express the importance of this. "I cannot – continue to – exist as part of my Father's creation."

Sam set the salt canister down on the floor with a bang. Dean and Cas looked up as he sat cross-legged next to the salt circle. In the flickering light of the holy fire, he looked exactly like a Cub Scout leader at a campout.

"I freed Lucifer from Hell," he said as though Cas had never heard this before.

"It is different, Sam. You are human, and you had no idea –"

"Do you know how many people died as a result?"

"Yes."

"Well, I can only estimate. I tracked it. Between the natural – well, the unnatural disasters, the collateral damage from battles with angels, and people he killed just, I guess, because he felt like killing people, I figure I'm responsible for about 26,300 deaths."

Castiel was silent.

"It dwarfs anything you've done," Sam said. "And don't think there weren't plenty of times since then, especially the first few months, when I didn't think about taking the easy way out. Even if I went to Hell, I figured – I figured I'd be getting the suspense over with."

"But then you spent a century in Hell, essentially atoning."

"True. Did it bring any of the 26,300 back to life? The only thing – the _only_ thing I can do now is to be the best man I can be, save as many as I can, be a good brother and a good friend. So I try my best to do that. I live with that 26,300 every day. But that's the operative word. I live. With it."

He stood, picking up a salt container and the sleeping bag. "It's a nice night, and there's about a million stars out there. I'm gonna sleep on the porch. Yell if you need anything."

After a few moments, Dean said, "You gotta talk to me, Cas. 'Cause as good as you are, interpreting my slang? That's how good I am interpreting you when you're quiet."

There was another moment's silence.

"I can hardly make myself look at you, Dean. How can I talk to you? How can you not wish to see me destroyed? After what I did to you? And – " He covered his eyes for a moment. "I raped Sheryl."

"Yeah. And I didn't stop you."

"And when you consider – that these are the least of my sins. I worked with Crowley for his benefit. I killed angels who discovered what I was doing. I opened a portion of the spiritual realm deliberately sealed off by my Father to drain the power of the beings therein. And then I claimed – I claimed to be – I thought to usurp – "

He lunged toward the fire, but Dean had seen that one coming and grabbed Castiel's upper arm, hauling him backward. Castiel's foot grazed the fire and he cried out in pain, but now Dean grabbed his other arm, pinned them behind Castiel's back, and pulled Castiel's arms to his chest, which dragged the angel's feet away from the flame.

Sam was at the door. "He OK?"

"Yeah. Tried to burn himself up. – Stop fighting me, Cas. You're no stronger than I am right now. This whole thing must have kicked the crap out of your grace, at least for a while. – Better get the duct tape."

Castiel stopped fighting. "That won't be necessary."

"Says you. Promise you won't roll into that fire. Or step into it or make contact with it at all."

Sam nodded approvingly. "Good drafting."

Castiel gave a horrible broken laugh. "Shall I swear on my word as a faithful angel of the Lord?"

"Swear to me personally." Dean gave Cas' arms an exasperated jerk. "Give your personal promise, to me, that you won't kill yourself, and we won't tape you up."

"I cannot. I will give you my personal promise that I will not destroy myself in the next week."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look and a slight nod. Dean released Cas, who slumped over, Sam's shirt draped across his lap, fists clenched and resting on the floor.

"OK," Dean said to Sam. "Go ahead and get some sleep."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." He gave a dirty grin. "I don't want you rushing in here every time you hear us makin' noise."

Sam looked stunned. "In your – storied record of inappropriate jokes, this has got to be – "

"G'night, Sam."

Sam held up his hand. "See you in the morning."

There was silence for another minute.

"You know what I noticed, in your list of crimes, you didn't include killing Raphael."

"Raphael himself was committing grave sins in wanting to raise Lucifer again and disregarding the loss of human life that would result. Sam feels that his sins dwarf mine because of the numbers of people killed. By that standard, Raphael's sin would have dwarfed Sam's. I tried to reason with him, to persuade him. He would not be stopped. Violence was necessary."

"OK, so why didn't you just kick Raphael into Hell and throw away the key, like God did with Lucifer?"

"I lacked the power." Castiel shook his head. "I know what you're trying to do, Dean. You're trying to say that what I did is understandable because I was trying to save human lives. It's an argument that the ends justify the means, which you would never allow Sam to use when he was using demonic power to fight evil."

"Yeah, well – there was a bunch of stuff I wouldn't 'allow' back then. I was so damn mad and scared most of the time, I never listened to him. It still haunts me that I told him once that if I didn't know him, I'd hunt him. I'm surprised he listened to me as much as he did. I was right, of course. But, y'know, somehow being an asshole doesn't help to convince people that you're right. Sam blames himself completely, but I have part of the guilt for that 26,300."

"I don't think – "

"And you know why I was so scared and pissed off all the time, not listening and pushing Sam away?"

"You had just spent forty years in Hell. You were tortured ceaselessly until you finally broke and agreed to torture other souls. You were filled with terror, rage, and guilt. I don't understand what this has to do with the fact that I committed the most horrific crimes imaginable."

"It's connected because it's not enough to say, you did something rotten, therefore you're rotten. Yeah, some people – all they care about is power, or making people suffer because they're miserable themselves, or whatever. But Sam didn't raise Lucifer because it would show everyone how cool he was – matter of fact, he was trying to stop Lucifer. And you – well. If you'd known that the power of those Purgatory souls would send you off the deep end and you'd start going around telling everyone you're God, would you have opened Purgatory?"

Castiel thought for a moment.

Then, "I honestly don't know, Dean. I did terrible things even before I ingested the souls' power. Perhaps I wouldn't have cared how offensive to God they would make me. But it doesn't matter. Even a well-meaning human who commits such sins must atone."

"Well, OK, start thinking about how you're going to atone."

Cas looked overwhelmed. "Even to begin – perhaps, for you, I may be able to – "

"Never mind about me right now. How about Sheryl?"

"She is no doubt profoundly frightened and disturbed – "

" – or still brainwashed and thinking she's God's girlfriend."

Castiel closed his eyes and his shoulders slumped. "In either case, removing her memory of – tonight, would be best."

"Yeah. Unless, you know, she's, well, pregnant."

Castiel's eyes flew wide open and he looked at Dean directly for the first time since he'd tried to immolate himself.

Then he relaxed and shook his head. "I will discern that before taking any action, but I doubt it. The power of Purgatory was a barren power. I fixed the wall in Sam's mind, but I doubt if I could have created it had it not already existed. I kept thinking of the problems I wanted to solve, and my solutions all involved either killing someone or rewarding humans for producing an answer. I couldn't even create a pattern for a robe – I doubt if I could have created life."

"But if you have?"

"Then I must see Sheryl face to face, ask her if she wants me to change her memory of the conception to something pleasant. If she wants me to play any part in the child's life or leave her completely alone. After I have conveyed my profoundest – " He sighed. "'Remorse' is inadequate."

"OK, this is good," Dean said. "Let's keep going. Who's next on the atonement list?"

"You're too flip, Dean. I committed the worst possible blasphemy. I assumed the mantle of divinity and claimed to take my Father's place. It is unforgivable."

Dean's head pulled back a little on his neck. "Even by God? I thought He was all about forgiveness. I mean, sure, you're going to want to make up somehow for – "

"For saying that I was a new and better God?" Castiel actually laughed, a hard sharp bark. "I can think of only one place – "

After a moment, Dean said, "What? Where?"

"It is not of import."

"Don't give me that. You were thinking of someplace you could go to –"

He grabbed Castiel's shoulder and yanked him so that the angel had to face him. "You are not going to send yourself to Hell."

"Can you think of anyone more fit for – "

"God, yes, Cas, lots of – "

"I am an angel who has murdered, raped, committed the vilest sin against God – "

"I don't hear God screaming, do you?"

"If a human committed such – "

"Yeah, he'd be Hell-worthy if he didn't repent. I always thought repentance was important. I thought God cared about repentant sinners. Aren't religious people always saying that?"

Cas was silent.

"It doesn't matter, anyway. You won't go. 'Cause you know what'll happen if you do."

"I will pay the price for – "

"No, I mean to me."

Cas started physically, then relaxed. "You will not kill yourself to find me in Hell. There would be no point."

"No, there wouldn't. I'll figure out a way to open the Devil's Gate in Wyoming and walk in."

Castiel looked at Dean, stupefied.

"You know I'll do it. God, I don't, I really don't want to. But I will. And if I do that, you know what'll happen."

Castiel swallowed. "Sam will go in after you."

"Right. So unless you want all three of us stretched out on racks down there – "

"Promise me you will not."

"No way, Cas. If you send yourself to Hell – even if you just disappear without any explanation – that's what I'll do. I'll go in and pull you out the way you pulled me. Or we can listen to each other scream in the same torture chamber. End of discussion."

Castiel averted his face. "Why would you – How could you possibly – after what I did to you? I realize that you chose to – distract me, but – because of my madness for power and insanity, you were forced to endure beating and humiliating degradation."

Dean yawned. Then he stretched out on the floor, bending his body slightly to fit inside the circle, leaning on one elbow, a surprisingly sensual and relaxed pose for someone humiliatingly degraded.

"You asked me a question awhile ago, and I had to give you bull for an answer, but now I think I want to tell you the truth."

Cas looked confused. "I don't recall – "

"When did I first realize that I loved you."

Cas closed his eyes again. "Please. Don't." His voice was strained to breaking. "Please. Don't humor me. Or placate me. I would never have – In sanity, I would not have inflicted – "

"It was when I was living with Lisa."

Castiel went completely still, physically and verbally.

Dean wasn't even looking at him. "God, I was screwed up," he said softly. "That whole time after – after Hell – Well, you know. Dreams about Hell every night, so real it was like being there. Nonstop fear and guilt all the time I was awake. And God, I was so scared Sam was gonna end up there. When he raised Lucifer it shook him so bad, he really needed someone to help, and – it just wasn't in me, you know. I just couldn't help him. I couldn't even trust him. I started trusting him just in time – " He took a breath, deliberately relaxed his muscles – "just in time to see him fall into Hell with Lucifer possessing him."

There was absolute quiet in the room for a moment.

"So let's face it, I wasn't the best candidate for falling in love. I remembered in the past thinkin' it might be good someday, but I couldn't even imagine it at that time. Even if I had it in me to fall in love, I'd've just felt sorry for the poor dumb bastard I was in love with and gotten the hell away. The only reason I went to Lisa was because I'd promised Sam I would after he – was gone. And she knew. The guy you're living with dreams of being tortured almost every night and wakes up at three in the morning knowing that his kid brother's being tortured while he lies there – you'd have to be pretty dumb to think that this guy's a hot prospect, and Lisa's smart. She took me in like she'd take in a dog hit by a car.

"And started healing me. Just unbelievable patience and nonstop caring, no matter what – and of course Ben – " He smiled reminiscently. "A kid wants to do so much and know so much and he looks at you with those big eyes and no matter how deep down you are, and even if it hurts 'cause it reminds you of the way Sam used to look at you, it's hard to just say, Go away, kid." He chuckled a very little. "Hard? It's impossible.

"They turned me back into a human being again. Lisa and Ben. The anti-Hell. At first I thought I was cracking up for good. I went to see a shrink, it was that bad. I just told him Sam had died, you know, how close we were, our only family. He told me I'd resisted feeling for so long and now that I was starting to let myself feel again, it seemed like I was getting worse, but really I was getting better. I swore at him and never went back." Dean looked rueful. "Should probably drop the guy a line.

"I could never figure out – Once I did – After – " He shook his head, cleared his throat. "Once I did start feeling anything good – It was nice to be able to give Lisa something besides silence and an occasional scream and yard work and baby-sitting. But it wasn't the kind of feeling she deserved. Couldn't figure out why I didn't fall in love with this beautiful, great woman that I owed so much to. And then one day I was sitting on a park bench thinking, and I remembered that day after Hallowe'en when you came over and sat on the bench next to me and started talking, and I knew." He gave a little one-shoulder shrug. "I knew why I couldn't fall in love with Lisa. It was 'cause there was someone else."

After a long moment, Castiel asked, "Why did you never tell me before?"

Dean snorted, sitting up. "Right. I got this vision of a personals ad: Former torturer from Hell, now two steps away from being a basket case on Earth, seeks righteous loving – " he choked a little – "perfect angel for long-term relationship." Castiel shook his head, but Dean was talking and didn't notice. "It wasn't going to happen. I wasn't going to let it happen.

"But when you showed up full of Purgatory crap, crazy and saying we had to worship you, my first thought was, We're going to have to kill him. And my second thought was, I'm going to do anything necessary to get him out of this alive, somehow, anyhow, and then I'm not going to keep my mouth shut about the way I feel about him. Ever again.

"So when – I said I loved you – I said it knowing that I had to get you away from Sam and Bobby and get you thinking about something else – but I also meant it. And what we did, back there? Yeah, that's not the way our first time went in my fantasy life. But it's also – it's not like I hadn't had the fantasies. Imagining someone like you could bear to get physical with a, with someone, seriously imperfect. Like me."

"I wasn't perfect, Dean. I never was. And now I am so vile that – "

After a moment, Dean finished the sentence for him. " – that you couldn't even think about loving anyone. Letting them love you. I know."

"You don't know. Our situations are very different. You said that Lisa took you in as she would take in a dog who'd been hit by a car. I am – I am a driver who hit a dog and kept going."

"Because there was a fire down the block. Because you thought your family was going to die."

"It is true – I kept thinking – I knew that if Raphael raised Lucifer again you would be on the front lines. And Sam. And I thought, I would do anything, anything, to keep you from being destroyed. So I did. I destroyed others. And myself."

Shifting so that he sat behind Cas, Dean put one leg on either side of him and wrapped his arms around the angel, feeling the muscles in Cas' back and arms tense as he did so, pulling Castiel's back to his own chest.

"I cannot – I am not – "

"I know," Dean repeated. "I'm not asking for us to be a hot item right now. Just let me do for you what Lisa did for me. Let me give you a place to land. Believe me, you won't be getting off easy. You're still gonna feel like all your bones are broken and your guts pulverized."

Castiel gave a deep sigh; Dean felt it shudder against his forearms. "I could heal that."

Dean smiled a little, rested his mouth on Cas' shoulder in what was not quite a kiss.

"If my Father could forgive me – and you could, could love me – it might – Truly, Dean, I wish I could see how it's possible. But I don't."

"Well, I can't speak for God," Dean began, then interrupted himself. "No, you know what? I am gonna speak for God. This is the only time I've ever been sure I know what's in the guy's mind. He can forgive you, Cas. And He knows I can love you. Because I do. No matter what, I do."

He pulled the angel closer to him. "It's possible, Castiel," he said, letting the full name linger on his tongue, the first time he'd ever said it. "Believe me, 'cause I know. It's possible."

.

THE END


End file.
